An attempt to show dawn, painted by calor-gas-light.
Monday 30/Tuesday 31 July, 1973, RSPB Loch Garten: Monday was a good night for night watch. The Moon went down behind Craigowrie, Jupiter shone over Torr Hill and Mars came up red behind the eyrie. When it became really dark at midnight there were about 5 times as many stars out as I’d see on a good night at home . . . the Milky Way a streak above the eyrie running right through the W of Cassiopeia. The Pleiades, thousand of them, blue in binoculars came up left of tree.
The dramatic dawn, blinding bright when the sun got up behind the eyrie and shone directly into the hide.
From my Osprey Camp sketchbook, July-August, 1973: I would have done some sketching on the summit of Cairngorm on Wednesday but the cloud never rose and my hands were numb. I was counting people who got to the top (4,084 feet). It was like working in a small cold but well frequented moon . . . The ride on the ski lift was great fun.
Note: In the Cairngorm Visitor Survey, during the period 19-25 July inclusive, 2,677 people were recored at the summit with a maximum of 900 (exactly!) on 23 July and a minimum of 65 on 20 July. I was there on the final day.
On Wednesday evening David [a surveyor from Edinburgh] and I took the night watch. l started, then realized that I’d already read ‘The Assailants’ by Stan Barstow so I read another short story from Argosy 1970.
The ospreys stretched their wings the wren sang round the hide. It began getting light at two thirty to three and got lighter and lighter. The chaffinches came for biscuits and a squirrel. But the ♂ didn’t bring a fish – they seemed to be finishing off the monster fish he staggered home with last night.
On Friday afternoon we walked up to Einich. Eight miles along a track built to transport pipes to the loch. We didn’t have time to climb the steep sides. No eagles. But two Ring Ousels. A good walk though.
In the evening with Jean and Peter walked along the firebreak; kestrel, capercaillie, mistle throstles, small brittle skinned brown puff ball type fungus; along past Malachi until it was possible to cut across the moor and back to camp where I had another go at Chris’s mini. It looks as if it’s breathing this time; keep trying.
Thursday 9th August 1973, from my Osprey Camp, Loch Garten, sketchbook: What a wind; swaying the forest pines, bending over the birches on the moor, breaking up the bank of cloud coming up the valley. There was white water on the gullery and grey breakers on Garten when I got round. I walked on shore getting sprayed.
‘They’ll moulder away and be like other loam.’ said Edwin Muir in his poem ‘The Horses’. This lorry was mouldering away on Torr Hill.
Fifty years ago today I was halfway through a 3-week stint as a volunteer warden for the RSPB’s Operation Osprey at Loch Garten.
A squirrel came down from the shutters into the hide and ran off with an entire Rich Abernethy biscuit.
The female osprey seemed considering an extension to the nest . . .
Because the young are growing and knock her out of the nest every time they exercize
the nest slipped over the other day.
WEDNESDAY 1st of AUGUST
Up Cairngorm with Linda & Bill . . . by chairlift to the middle station: the top section was closed because of high winds. Just beyond the Ptarmigan Restaurant a noise like a motor starting or one of the snow fences creaking in a the wind . . . a ptarmigan, no 3, no 10 . . . we walked towards them when they started moving we counted thirty but when they were still their plumage looked like granite only the white wings showed. Cairngorm had his head in the clouds. We turned back down.
